


How About those Mets?

by ecouterbien



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Flashbacks, Gen, Homelessness, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:55:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1366423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecouterbien/pseuds/ecouterbien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My mother was pregnant with me when...when he got sick. I mean she did her best, but, you know, it was a lot. They got divorced a few months after I was born. He was in and out of institutions for a while, but for the last 15 years he's been on the streets, mostly."</p>
            </blockquote>





	How About those Mets?

She sees him on the other side of the square, hunched over his coffee. Steam rises around his face. It’s past midnight and all she has to go on is the glow of the streetlights but she knows it’s him, immediately recognises the familiar slope of his shoulders. He’s wearing the blue Mets beanie she gave him the last time she saw him though time has made it more threadbare than it was when she last saw him in it. That was two years ago, no, two years, one month, and three weeks ago, and it was just as cold then as it is now.

He looks up as he hears the determined click of her heels approaching. He holds her gaze. There’s something familiar about those eyes, he can feel them searching him out. She hesitates, but only momentarily, pushes a smile onto her lips.

“Mind if I join you?”

He looks older than she remembers, though this could be because she’s not used to seeing him without his long black hair. It was thick like hers. Her mother would hold her hair between her fingers when she was a girl and say, “Just like you father’s, just like your father’s.” She never understood, her father had brown hair that was short and wavy and nothing like hers. It was only later when she told Joan about him that she understood, and realised that it was more than just her hair that made her father a constant presence long after he’d all but disappeared from their lives.

He smiles back and nods his head in assent, continuing to watch her as she sits beside him. There’s a glint in his eye, she wonders if he’s welling up and braces herself.

“Joanie, Joanie…”

At first she only remembered him from stories and associations. Once her mother had told her about him she was hungry for details, she wanted so badly to fill in the outline that she had, to make him as real as if he’d been there when she took her first steps or as she bustled out the front door on her first day of school.

“…that’s who it is, my Joanie! How old are you? No, no, that’s far too rude a question to ask a beautiful lady like yourself. It was so long ago now, but she’d be your age now, yes, she’d be the same age as you.” He smiles at her fondly and returns his stare to the still steaming cup of coffee in his hands. She hopes it’s her he’s searching his mind for.

Sometimes she wonders whether she was better off remembering him that way. There’s a scar above is left eye that wasn’t there the last time she saw him at the St. Ignatius shelter. She wants so much to ask him what happened, did he get to an ER and get it stitched up properly and checked for concussion, but she knows questions will only tangle his thoughts. There was a time when she would have fought to get in there, when she’d cling white-knuckled to his fleeting moments of lucidity and pull, desperate to drag out more than a fleeting recognition of her, angry at him for giving her a glimpse of what might be. She learns from her mistakes.

“Oh, that’s a…” she pauses, “…coincidence.”

“She’s a good girl, such a good girl.” She sips her coffee, “and smart, too. So smart. She’s a doctor you know, smart girl. And beautiful. Beautiful like her mother.”

Joan looks away, blinks hard.

“Of course I know all this already, I wanted to call her Jun, after my grandmother. She was good with remedies, that woman, everyone was afraid of her. Do you know what it means? Jun?”

She had heard this story before, but from her mother. He had wanted to call her Jun, stubbornly insisted on it. Her mother, fearing she’d be ostracised with a name like Jun had suggested Joan as a compromise. He’d scoffed at it, asking how she thought a name for an old lady would help her fit in in Queens any better.

“I’m a bit rusty, but I think it means esteemed?”

“Esteemed! Yes, yes,” he slaps his thigh excitedly, “Esteemed. You know what that means in English? Respect. It means respect. I want my daughter to have respect, to be respected and even though my wife got her way with her old lady name, look at her now, a doctor. Now that’s respect.”

Even under the sallow glow of the streetlights she can see he’s beaming. She knows by now to savour these moments, to internalise the joy and keep its fragile flame flickering for as long as she can.

He taps the worn beanie and grimaces. “How about those Mets?” Before she can reply he stands up and offers her his hand, “Well, it was nice meeting you…”

“…Joan, my name’s Joan.”

“You’re full of coincidences, Joan, I’ll be sure to tell my daughter about you when I see her.” He nods at her one last time then turns and walks away down the street. She watches him pass in and out of the glow of the street lights until he turns the corner a block away.

“Watson I’ve exhausted every possible avenue of investigation here, we need to go.”

She stares absently at Sherlock. She can hear his feet twitching in the snow.

“Your father?”

“Yes.”


End file.
